


From Afar

by illegible



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29331468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/pseuds/illegible
Summary: Igeyorhm and Lahabrea have spent millenia sharing successes and failures in service to the Ardor.
Relationships: Igeyorhm/Lahabrea (Final Fantasy XIV)
Kudos: 5





	From Afar

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the beginning of this maybe a year plus ago! Do have plans for where it'll go, not sure how fast it'll happen but I still like it.

Memory proves curious to one sundered as she is. Igeyorhm can no longer recall her mortal mother’s face, her father’s voice. She is left with fragments of impressions. Coarse fingertips, dirt embedded under nails. Eyes narrowed, teeth bare. The sharpness of words hurled in anger, inelegant but with precision borne of cruelty. Her own voice grown hoarse and bitter through screaming. The white edge of knuckles. Harsh winds and gray skies. Fields that bore no harvest. Marrow, she well knows, as something to be consumed and savored—its flavor almost sweet. Nutty. More delicate than butter.  
  
Never waste what might sustain. 

He found her hunting by moonlight, wearing hides she’d tanned herself. Dwarfed by pines, smeared in sage and fox urine. 

Arrow trained on a stag. Body so still all tension became invisible. 

She’d had no notion anyone was behind her until he whispered her name. 

Had Lahabrea been any slower, her elbow would have caught his jaw. Despite the mask which hid him from view, despite the humor he clung to even then, in memory she recalls the twinge of relief as he slipped from existence. Stepped effortlessly, hands upraised, from beneath another bough. All curling smoke and shadow

He’d frightened her. She had never seen a darkness so pure as his, gold pauldrons seeming impossible as the teleportation itself. Alien in his sterility. She’d thought him a wraith and she’d feared for her soul. 

Yet Lahabrea never laid a hand on her. Never raised his voice. When she fled he kept pace with ease, darting between trees. Racing as children do. In hindsight, the amusement that seemed so sinister could be explained by simple familiarity. His new-old friend hurrying away on foot until her lungs burned empty and her limbs gave out and there was no reason. 

In the end she’d found him sitting beside her, unruffled, back against the trunk of a tree. Waiting for her to listen. 

He’d frightened her, yet his tone was gentle and his manner was warm. It did not take long to decide he was hardly the worst man she’d faced.

***

The girl she was had been so ugly. What could be expected when one was born to a world that was no better? Torn and disfigured by a goddess, Igeyorhm understands Hydaelyn not merely in the moments of rage she inspires but by the silence which echoes in her wake.

Mortals are weak. Helpless. Depraved. Ready to sacrifice everything at the altar of the self once circumstances turn dire. Without food they consume one another. Without shelter they go to war. Without security they make an offering of freedom, butcher their own more ardently than any enemy without. 

She had not believed the Unbroken when they relayed the selflessness of old. How could she? It was wholly beyond her ken.

When they returned her soul stone to her, Igeyorhm found herself weeping bitterly at what she found.

What can she do but trust Zodiark? With her bond renewed once more, His vision of world without pain consumes her.

***

Lahabrea finds it ironic that she takes so readily to ice, and at first she assumes this to be some failing on her part. Hers is the element most closely aligned to light, after all—polar opposite to what he favors. When at last she broaches the subject with him he lets her fume and snap before eventually raising a hand for peace.

“You mistake me,” he says. “Yes, the Igeyorhm I knew dabbled with my affinity on occasion. You remain quite alike in other ways.”

Her predecessor preferred to nurture the earth where she sets it to rest. She was notorious for multitasking and oft set her hands alight like twin torches of creation. A talented woman, their Martyr, applying herself to art after art all in the service of others.

“I admired you then,” the Speaker admits. “I admire you still for what you have kept. Nothing more.”

She never does answer him. Instead, something inside her curls with shame or gratitude and a heat she cannot name.


End file.
